It wasn�t easy sharing licks.
Our crowd swirled into place
like a full skirt on a formal lawn.
The neighbors whispered
and green-needled wind shuffled,
bent the iris blue.

It�s then that I see your mother run into the barn
where a chicken snake strikes.
She scoops up biddies with her dress front,
swings a sling blade, severs its black throat.

The tanned hands touched the warm skin.
Sunlight beat them until they sank back
into their own wrinkles,
long before they turn into grandmother cheeks.

Her hair�s damp on her forehead.
Softly, she brushes it back, rushes
to finish squeezing lemons by the fistful
and not squawking when the juice
squirts into her eye.

I see her eyes follow her man, watch
how he wanders his mower
to the yard�s edge,
clips here, clips there.
June on the screened porch.

Remember how we sat this time last year
dripping night sweat and suffering smells
of crepe myrtle. Their petals were so pink,
until summer storms tossed them about,
blowing snow on unkept grass.

Now this small house she left me sweats grease.
Crowing babies are glued to my hip
until they drop,
one by one,
and say goodbye
to a man�s frame on the mantel.
She warned me of how all men are one
and of how their hips curve into waves.



�2005 by Sarah Wilson